Yipes Partners With Universities for Light-Speed Access to Internet2

March 6, 2001

SAN FRANCISCO, Mar 5, 2001 — Yipes Communications, Inc., the defining provider of scalable bandwidth on demand, today announced that its optical IP networks have been selected by major centers of higher education to link regional institutions with the Internet2 core network infrastructure. Yipes’ regional networks will facilitate light-speed access to these Internet2 sites by colleges and universities, research hospitals, K-12 schools and other qualified institutions.

Internet2 is a project of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, a consortium led by more than 180 universities. It aims to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies for the national research community and foster the rapid transfer of new network services to the broader Internet community. Its super-fast network represents the state-of-the-art in backbone connectivity. Major research institutions aggregate Internet2 traffic within their regions through high-speed access points called GigaPoPs.

“Customers can enjoy the full performance of Internet2 only if they have equally fast local-loop access,” said Todd Hanson, Principal Analyst at Gartner Dataquest. “Winning vendors must offer high performance via scalable optical networks based on Gigabit Ethernet technology.”

Yipes’ pioneering optical IP networks now give customers scalable access to Internet2 at gigabit speeds through three sites: Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX) in College Park, Md., a consortium founded by the University of Maryland, Georgetown University, George Washington University and Virginia Tech; the Mid-Atlantic GigaPoP in Philadelphia for Internet2 (MAGPI), overseen by the University of Pennsylvania; and the Goddard GigaPoP at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass.

Yipes is the only optical Gigabit Ethernet network to collocate with Mid-Atlantic Crossroads. Government agencies, educational institutions and other organizations seeking access to Internet2 need only connect locally to Yipes in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. to gain near-instantaneous access to the research backbone, a far more cost-effective solution than running fixed, point-to-point lines from each customer to the GigaPoP.

“We are excited to have Yipes peer with our facility,” said Dr. Anthony Conto, Executive Director of Mid-Atlantic Crossroads. “Yipes provides a low threshold for customers to get very high network performance, with fully scalable bandwidth from 1 Megabit per second to 1 Gigabit per second. And because Yipes hands customers a simple Ethernet connection, they have dramatically simplified engineering, provisioning, and ongoing support issues for both MAX and the connecting institutions.”

The University of Pennsylvania’s MAGPI has selected Yipes as a preferred local loop partner. Besides connecting customers to Internet2 at any bandwidth up to a gigabit per second, Yipes’ network will allow private research and educational institutions in the Greater Philadelphia region to build a virtual community bysharing non-Internet2 traffic at LAN speeds. K-12 schools, for example, could exchange project data with community colleges and universities over the same Yipes network they use to access Internet2.

“Distance learning is a big application that we foresee developing with the help of Yipes,” said Greg Palmer, Director of MAGPI. “For example, we are considering a video clearinghouse that would allow educational institutions to access streaming media from servers in one central location, rather than relying on analog VHS tapes.”

Palmer said MAGPI selected Yipes for its scalability and low cost, in contrast with more expensive, fixed data circuits from phone companies. “T-1 lines [1.5 Mbps] lack sufficient bandwidth to make good use of Internet2, and the high cost of a T-3 [45 Mbps] is an immediate conversation stopper for many customers,” he said.

“With Yipes, customers buy only the bandwidth they need,” Palmer added. “Yipes is far and away more affordable than traditional carriers. That’s a real plus for educational institutions, which can’t easily get the cost of communications covered in their research grants.”

Yipes is also connected to the Goddard GigaPoP managed by Worcester Polytechnic Institute. WPI was so impressed that it also selected Yipes to carry all of its ordinary Internet traffic, which doesn’t qualify for the research-oriented Internet2 network. WPI’s fat 45-Mbps pipe to the Internet through Yipes “just made a lot of sense given the price and flexibility of Yipes’ bandwidth on demand,” said Allan Johannesen, Director of Internetworking and Telecommunications at WPI.

Yipes is widely recognized as the first national provider of fully scalable bandwidth on demand. Yipes’ managed optical IP networks deliver an unmatched combination of speed, simplicity and flexibility, using the pervasive and familiar Ethernet interface. Yipes services include Yipes MAN (LAN-to-LAN service between business locations) and Yipes NET (high-speed Internet service), both scalable from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps, in 1 Mbps increments. Businesses can also connect sites across the country at customer-selected speeds using Yipes WAN, a wide area network service. Yipes WALL provides customers with the safety of a secure, managed firewall service. Yipes WEB offers a suite of managed data services. With Yipes’ Just-In-Time Bandwidth(SM), customers get the service they need, when they need it.

Yipes currently serves 20 markets across the country. Its customers include Fortune 1000 companies, ISPs and ASPs, Web-based businesses, software developers, law firms, major medical facilities, universities, financial institutions, school districts and government agencies.

Yipes is the defining provider of managed optical IP networks. Yipes leverages the elegance of native Ethernet technology to provide Just-In-Time Bandwidth(SM) that is smoothly and quickly scalable from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps (in 1 Mbps increments), enabling the next generation of Internet services. Yipes’ highly affordable services, currently available in 20 markets coast-to-coast, include Yipes MAN (metro area networking), Yipes WAN (wide area networking), Yipes NET (high-speed Internet access), Yipes WALL (managed firewall service) and Yipes WEB (e-commerce infrastructure). Yipes is building the first Application-Aware Network(SM), which will empower customers to manage bandwidth and quality of service on a real-time, application-specific basis. Yipes has received $291 million in funding from more than 30 investors including Norwest Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), The Sprout Group/CSFB, Charter Growth Capital, JP Morgan Partners, BancBoston Capital, Soros Private Equity Partners, Focus Capital and Intel Capital. Yipes has been honored for innovation and excellence by America’s Network, Computerworld, Inter@ctive Week, The Net Economy, tele.com and Telephony magazines. The company is headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.yipes.com.